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Thursday, January 28, 2016

As I sit here staring at a blank screen sloooooooowly
filling with words, I’d like to own up to something.

My bathroom, the one I share with my husband,
is filthy and needs to be cleaned.

The kids were just off school for four days due
to the several feet of snow (OMG save
me) we received in a massive winter storm and I asked them to clean their rooms
and their own filthy shared bathroom.
Which they did. Because my kids
know that if they don’t do what I ask, things happen which make them cry fat
tears of sorrow and shame.

I'm exaggerating, of course. This doesn’t really happen that much
anymore. What I do is follow them around
with bathroom cleaner and rags, scream-singing my own version of Barney’s clean-up
song until they comply.

Sorrow and shame are optional and totally on
them.

As a rule, cleaning bathrooms isn’t my most reviled
household chore. I hate vacuuming much
worse, followed by kitchen duty and sweeping / mopping hard floors. Bathrooms are usually small rooms, and in ten
or fifteen minutes they can be refreshed.

But our bathroom is big. Every surface needs a scrub, and to be clear,
our bathroom consists of one large room and a smaller throne room that houses a
toilet. That’s two rooms, math whizzes.

Two rooms full of sinks, a shower, a large tub,
and the throne room – that’s a lot of crusty bathroom area to clean up,
people. Whoever decided that the masters
of the home need a huge master bathroom needs a junk punch.

But ahmagahhhhhhhhhh it needs to be disinfected
like yesterday.

And I’d rather do anything but clean it. Like the following:

1. Write a blog post about not cleaning the
bathroom what is my life.

2. Watch a thirty minute YouTube video.If you know me, you know that I have a hard
rule against watching online videos if they are over one minute long and aren’t
funny or cute or involve someone falling down or possibly being injured. Educate yourself. It’s not porn, jeez. Settle down.

3. Order new window blinds to replace the broken ones
in our house, and then after placing the order realize I forgot one because
everyone knows that ordering blinds is almost as mind numbing as cleaning the
bathroom; you’re bound to make a mistake.
It’s actually worse, because when you receive the blinds you have to install
them, and you know you’re going to do it wrong and what would be a 30-minute job
for normal people will take you half the day.
You’re terrible at home improvement!

4. Doodle.
I got an A in doodling, which is the mark of a true genius in every
fantasy world.

5. Apply eye makeup. There’s an inch of crud on the bathroom
counter, but at least I’m wearing mascara.
But no lipstick! ::runs off to
apply lipstick::

7. Think to myself: I would do almost anything
instead of clean my bathroom. Think of a
million other things you’d rather do than clean a bathroom, because that job’s
for suckers, and this blog post is terrible.
Congratulations. You’re at the
end.

Eh, it’s not that bad. I'm pretty busy - it can go another week.

*******

This post inspired by:

Mama Kat's Writing Workshop

Prompt #3: List 7 things you
would rather do than clean your bathroom.

Monday, January 25, 2016

We took a quick vacation right after the
holidays, and despite my plan that the trip would recharge my will to keep living
after the build up and let down of the season, it served only to throw me off.

The kids have so much going on after school
every day and on the weekends, and the cancellations / scheduling / rescheduling
are unrelenting. I’m spending half my time
reshuffling the calendar and trying to work out logistics again, and the other half wondering why anyone bothers with a
schedule at all. A set routine is a pipe
dream, a distant memory.

I have had a cold for almost two weeks; the
amount of mucus that flows from a body is staggering. A groove is difficult to get back when you’re
sitting around with tissues stuffed into your nostrils.

Last, and highest on the list: I have loads of
free time and I’m using it to procrastinate.

The house is dirty and someone hit my car in a
parking lot and I haven’t yet had it looked at and oh, hey, there’s three feet
of snow on the ground. Our garbage can
is under there somewhere. You know, tomorrow
is another day. I’ll find it then.

Priorities.
I am having trouble with them.

There are no projects on the horizon, just daily
things. Nothing pressing, nothing of
high importance. Just the normal
chugging of normal life. The 24-hour
stuff. Nothing big, nothing small. Just – normal.

I’m letting it all slide. Because it’s dumb stuff and nobody cares
about whether or not it gets done, and life will keep chugging along even if
these things are left undone. I used to
care more about these things.

Is this what people mean when they say “I’m
bored” ? Because I never thought I’d
be. I’m not one of those people who need
constant entertainment. I can spend a
week inside and not feel as if I have nothing to do. There is always something to do. I can rip up a carpet, paint a room, purge
unwanted items, clean the fridge, organize closets. There is no way I could find nothing to do.

But all those things – eh, they can wait.

I’ve got this big book about Paris to
read. The kids are off school today –
first snow day of the year – and they keep producing laundry. I’ll do that, and eventually I will also make
dinner, return a phone call, watch more TV.

My mojo has
stalled. I’m unfocused, lackadaisical, who
cares-ish about things. The machine is
running well enough without my superpowers, which I’ve learned really aren’t so
super after all. It’s easy to lie low
when you’re feeling a little blurry around the edges, a little slower than
usual and everyone else around.

Eventually I’ll get back into the swing of
things – I always do. There is comfort in
knowing yourself this well. But for now,
I’m just sort of – being here. Doing laundry. Getting over this cold. Procrastinating.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

I have mixed feelings about pictures of myself
in the recent past. They remind me of how much older I’ve become.Everything’s a little slower, a little lower.I’m weaker physically.Just a little bit.

No matter that I was up until 2 am with a sick
child the other night, which throws everything off.
Plus, I’m coming off of a terrible week-long cold. My eyes sport shadows they didn’t in recent
years. My body has shifted and shrunk,
yet in some places it has thickened. It seems the
years have multiplied.
Moreover, my mind is settling, a sobering fact on its own. I don’t actually mind that part too much. I feel better about my place in the world.

People talk all the time about how old they
are, how old they feel. “I’m too old for
this,” they say. I used to dismiss this
line of thinking. How dare they say
that! Buck up and live your life, for
goodness’ sake. You only have one
life. You want to live it as an old
person? How drab. How sad.

“I’m old enough to know better not to walk
outside in the freezing cold,” I heard myself say to my neighbor the other
day. It was 15 degrees outside. We’ve walked together every weekday morning
for several years now, barring vacations, illness, and heavy
precipitation. Five years ago I might
have tried to convince my friend to join me in chancing ice and snow on the
sidewalks; now a wind gust or two sends me back to the warmth of my slippers
and coffee.

Five years ago.

A lifetime.
A minute.

I was in the thick of Mommy-ing, our kids 9 and
7. It was just a few years ago, but
pictures and videos suggest otherwise.
It was a lifetime ago. Ballet and
Christmas pageants and Little League, orchestrating playdates and helping to
choose clothes and tie shoes and practice spelling words and figure out math
problems. Packing lunches and drying
tears and refereeing fights and clean up those toys now and let's have a dance
party in the living room. Five years
ago there were bedtime stories at 8:30.

Five years ago I was running out the door for
Moms Nights Out, my girlfriend squealing her tires in the driveway as we sped
away shrieking into the night. Five
years ago a friend whose children were in college said to me “When they leave,
it all ends amazingly.” I nodded, but couldn’t
understand. I didn't care; I needed to get out once in a while.

If I could, I would grab my five years ago self
by the arm and say “Sit next to me; closer, now. I want to show you something. I want to tell you something.” And I’d show my five years ago self the
following picture:

That’s me, today. Tired because I was up until 2 am the night before with a sick
preteen who doesn’t need Mommy to give her medicine and to fill up the
vaporizer anymore; instead, she needs Mom to teach her how to take care of
herself when she gets a cold.

Me, with the short haircut that I wanted back
then but had been too afraid of cutting it again after the haircut debacle of
’02. And ’03, if we’re keeping
track.

Me with no makeup, sitting in an office chair
because my life contains more planning and logistics and less cleaning and
picking up after. More sitting but less
angst about it. More aches and pains,
but also less late nights “doing” after the kids go to bed. More early nights and mornings and less
feeling out of place for preferring them.
More real conversations, uninterrupted.
More knowing what healthy relationships look like. More knowing how to achieve them.

More me time.
All the me time.

That’s me in five years. More content, serene. Older.
Wiser.

I’m not sure that my five years ago self would
understand. Sometimes a person needs to
experience it for themselves.

Five years of life is a lot of years of
change. It shows in every way on our
bodies and in our hearts. So much
happens in five years. Children grow
into the people they will become; loved ones grow older and some are gone;
cherished relationships end and new ones begin.
Bodies shift, shrink, and thicken; as eyes and hearing fade, emotions
and feelings stretch and lengthen. Minds
settle into patterns of thinking. In
many ways we weaken, but in others, we are so much stronger.

As soon as you look up, five years are
gone. Everything you know today will end
amazingly.

A lifetime.
A minute.

*****

This post inspired by:

Mama Kat's Writing Workshop

Prompt #5: If you could have given yourself a snapshot
five years ago of what your life is like now, what would the picture be of and
how do you think you would have felt about it?

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

What’s that, you say?All the 2015 posts should be done by
now?It’s two weeks into 2016 and I’m a
little late, you say?Pish posh.Our Christmas tree is still up, so settle
down, Mindy.

* * *

I used to be a reader, reading books by the
stack. I often spent whole days reading.

Then I had children, and this habit
diminished. Then I started writing
regularly, and took to reading magazines and blogs, and it diminished even
further. Then I slaved through one too many
difficult and boring books, and oh, look, a book. Can I set my drink on that?

Then came 2015.

My kids were rarely reading for fun anymore,
instead complaining about the boring books
they were forced to read for school, having to complete stupid writing prompts about them and taking stressful quizzes about the subject matter to prove they read.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Reading is anything but boring, stupid, and
stressful. It is interesting, emotional,
exciting, an escape, and yes, educational.
I wanted to teach my kids this, and more importantly, remind myself. So I announced to no one in particular that I
would read two books a month in 2015, for a total of 24 books.

And I did.

And then I read eleven more.

Look. I’m
no genius. I’m not even a fast
reader. I often re-read whole chapters
because I don’t pay attention.
Thirty-five books may not seem like many books to the average well-read
person. No matter. I’m just a person who wants to read more, and
I did, and I feel… well, accomplished.

Did my reading more immediately influence my
children to read more? Not really. They still hate to read. But I can’t
help but feel as if the acts of reading in their presence and talking about the
books I read and passing on the books I read and telling them about the books I
think they’ll like is influencing them, somehow. This is how the legacy stuff happens: obscurely,
unevenly, slooooooowly.

And when they got new books for Christmas, they
peered inside the covers instead of drop-kicking them across the room. Which is a good start.

So let’s get to it – the list of books I read
in 2015.

* * *

January

1. Yes,
Please – Amy Poehler

2. Cold
Mountain – Charles Frazier

3. The
Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid

I started out strong in January. Amy Poehler’s memoir was a gift in more ways
than one, and solidified my adoration of her and also the belief that we
should be best friends.

February

4. That’s
Paris: An Anthology of Life, Love and Sarcasm in the City of Light – Vicki Lesage,
Ed.

5. Ghost
No More – CeeCee James

6. Unanswered
Prayers – Cassie Sperling

All books from authors I know or have connections
through blogging. Stories about living in Paris, a memoir of surviving unimaginable
childhood abuse, and an inspirational story of loss and love.

March

7. Outlander
– Diana Gabaldon

Outlander is no joke, people. This first book of the popular series is
major. It took me literally all month to
read this book. It’s also literally one
billion pages long. We also got hooked
on the series on Starz, which my husband refers to as “That Time-Travel Show With The Sex.” “Let’s watch this
together. You read these books,
right? Isn’t there a lot of sex in them? I bet the show has a lot of sex – it
is on Starz. There’s sex in this, right? The book has sex in it, right?”

Sometimes all you have to do is listen to a
person for thirty seconds to figure out what they’re all about.

Sigh. Is that all there is?

*Note:
There’s not that much sex in
Outlander. The book or the show. Jeez.

April

8. Dragonfly
in Amber – Diana Gabaldon

9. Let’s
Explore Diabetes with Owls – David Sedaris

After the second Outlander book I was over lengthy and detailed historical novels
about time travel and not that much sex, really. So I read David Sedaris’ latest for some
light laughs, also to get up-to-date on his material since we would be seeing
him live that month. I wrote about my
experience meeting him here.

In May I read Coming Home for the fifth (sixth? tenth?) time, and LOL’d while
reading Chelsea Handler’s latest collection of outrageous stories. And
before you judge me for my reading material this month, let me tell
you that Giuliana’s book was a pleasant surprise.

June

14. Open
Boxes: The Gift of Living a Full and Connected Life – Christine Organ

I did a review on Christine Organ’s book about
connecting all the compartments of our lives instead of keeping them
separate. The review is here.

July

15. The
Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides

16. Telex
From Cuba – Rachel Kushner

17. Suite
Française – Irène Némirovsky

18. We
Were Liars – E. Lockhart

All really good books. Suite
Française was super depressing and haunting, The Marriage Plot academic, Telex
From Cuba an interesting depiction of life in Cuba before Americans were driven
out, and We Were Liars made my head explode. I read that one in 24 hours.

August

19. Cambridge
– Susanna Kaysen

20. The
Cat’s Table – Michael Ondaatje

21. NW –
Zadie Smith

22. Eleanor
& Park – Rainbow Rowell

Also a good group of books. I have to say that out of the books I read this
month, Eleanor & Park was my
least favorite – I mean, it is young adult, so maybe that’s why. I just found it… tiresome. I recommend NW, though it’s not about the Pacific Northwest, which made me feel
like a big dummy by the time I figured it out.

September

23. Fangirl
– Rainbow Rowell

24. The Good
Neighbor – A.J. Banner

25. Are
You Happy Now? – Richard Babcock

26. Five
Little Peppers and How They Grew – Margaret Sidney

27. Jane
Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

28. A
Hopeful Heart – Amy Clipston

Kids went back to school, and I was on a
tear. After blowing my wad on Amazon, I
turned to some free books on my Kindle. The Good Neighbor was a quick mystery
that I enjoyed (I don’t usually read any mysteries) and Jane Eyre was read along with my son for a school unit because yes,
I’m *that* mom. My favorite, though, was
Five Little Peppers, a book that I’ve
had in my possession since I was seven and never opened until now.

October

29. Anne
of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery

30. Anne
of Avonlea – L.M. Montgomery

31. Life
and Other Near-Death Experiences – Camille Pagán

Can you believe I never read Anne of Green Gables before now? I devoured two of the series, having loaded the
entire collection onto my Kindle a couple of years ago. What was really difficult about reading Anne in this way was that I read two out
of 12 Anne books and 142 short
stories, and my Kindle says that I’m only 14% of the way through it all. And that sort of makes me want to put my head down and cry quietly for a little bit.

November

32. Fairyland:
A Memoir of My Father – Alysia Abbott

33. Where’d
You Go, Bernadette? – Maria Semple

Fairyland won my heart this month, a book that I’d been
wanting to read for a while. A memoir about
being raised in San Francisco by a single gay father during the time of my own
childhood, I was amazed and intrigued by our vast differences in upbringing as
well as devastated by her first-hand experience of the 1980s AIDS crisis in
that part of our country.

December

34. Beautiful
Ruins – Jess Walter

35. The
Burned Bridges of Ward, Nebraska – Eileen Curtright

Maybe it was the holiday season busy-ness, or
the fact that these books weren’t mind-blowing nor written by outrageous comedians
who make me pee in my pants laugh on the regular, but I was underwhelmed by
this pair of free Kindle books. Ah,
well. Deck the halls and all that jazz.

* * *

So there you have it – my books for 2015. I originally didn’t make a goal for 2016, because I don’t
like to set myself up for failure, but I sort of feel like I should. My friend Katie of Sluiter Nation set a goal for 40 books, so
maybe I’ll do the same. She also
already wrote her Books of 2015 post, because she’s on the ball and not
L-A-M-E like me. I sort of feel like I’m
copying her, but no matter; she’s an
English teacher, so she knows that copying other people’s work is cool if it’s referenced
correctly.

What are you going to read this year? Anything?
Let me know!

At the very least, tell me what free Kindle
books you’ve read that are worth the time. Please, help me make better choices in life. There are children to influence here.

Monday, January 4, 2016

I paused.
Resolutions are not easy for me. Enough Januarys have gone by to know
that something I promised myself on January first is likely to be forgotten by
the fifth.

This is the kind of question that kids ask
parents in order to glean knowledge and learn about life, whether they know it
or not, and I would have to form a real answer beyond the “HA! No way!
Resolutions are for suckers!” jokey one that was on the tip of my tongue.

Because I am a parent, and parents need to
teach while being honest and avoid steering children down a path of apathy, entitlement, and
laziness, which I would imagine a knee-jerk response like this one would do,
and so I measured my words.

“Not really.
But I like the idea of starting out a new year on a clean slate, and I
sort of try to do things right and well, which includes taking care of myself,
and not procrastinate, and get my work done instead of leaving things
unfinished.” I thought of my ongoing
to-do list, last dated October 27th, and the cupboard door that I
still have to replace. And make an appointment for the car to be fixed. And another year has gone
by and I still need to clean up the household filing system that I vowed to do
last year.

Resolutions are for suckers.

* * *

The past two years I picked a word to guide me
through the year. It’s the new
resolution, picking a word as a personal theme for the year instead of making
promises that are too easy to break. You
let this word infiltrate your psyche, and adopt it as sort of a personal
mantra. If your word is focus, it
reminds you to stay on task instead of being so scattered all the time. If your word is love then you have sex a lot.
Or stop kicking puppies. I don’t know.
Every person does her word in her own way.

My experience is that it works.

A couple of years ago I picked the word Reach and applied it to my blog and that year for my blog was the biggest one yet. I submitted and was published
everywhere and made loads of new blogger friends and people read my blog like nobody’s business, and I went to a writing conference and met Phil Donahue and felt like
a rock star.

Last year I picked Pray and I prayed like a
mother. Like I hadn’t prayed before. I felt centered and zen and like a cool customer
all year long. Pray was a good word for
my heart, mind, and soul. And Pray was a
good word for 2015, which was a crappy year.
I had plenty to pray about.

The weird thing about having a theme word is
that I don’t even try to make it work in my life. I write the word on a post-it and stick it on
my wall and voila! it happens.

This year I picked Let Go. I know – it’s two words. In the past this little detail might have
offended my sensibilities. But not this
year. This year, I am letting things go
that don’t matter.

Like the fact that my kids never make their
beds. Or put their towels in the
hamper. Or open their blinds or put
their laundry away. My kids are slobs I
guess. For the most part, I’ve let go a
lot of things already. Age brings a
natural sense of this. But having this
word in my arsenal this year also means that I am going to practice letting go the
things that plague me.

Like hanging onto old things that are no longer
meaningful. Feeling badly that I can’t
do more for someone. The guilt that I
feel when I say “no” to something just because I don't want to do it. Taking
too long to write a thank you card. Feeling
awkward and weird after I say something awkward and weird. Not fixing the cupboard door or the filing
system. The feeling of failure I have
when my kids become double booked for activities during the two hours a week
that they have to be somewhere and they miss something because FOR SOME REASON
EVERY ACTIVITY IS SCHEDULED AT THE SAME TIME EVERY SINGLE WEEK FOREVER OMG ARE
YOU SERIOUS IS THIS A JOKE

I am going to practice letting it all go.

Practicing my word takes very little effort. But it works.
Maybe the act of writing the word down and making it somewhat permanent
is enough to make a groove in my soft head.
Maybe that it lurks just out of my line of vision but is mos def in the periphery
for hours a day is enough for me to act upon it subconsciously.

Who knows what’s going on here. I’m letting go the fact that I don’t
know. Life is full of things I can’t
explain. I’m old enough to be okay with
that. I’m going to unfurl my fists and
splay my fingers wide, and feel the air dance through my fingers.

Happy 2016.

*******

*This post was in no way sponsored by Disney's epic animated masterpiece Frozen or its theme song Let It Go, which is an amazing song. I consider myself #blessed by having older children when this movie came out, which means that Let It Go is a favorite song of mine instead of one that makes me scream in agony when hearing it for the zillionth time. It's a great song, people. I'm humming it right now. And so are you. You're welcome.